had cracked and displaced the stones. It
enclosed all the top of the hill, perhaps three acres of ground, and
on it at intervals were planted soap-stone pillars, each of them about
twelve feet in height, and fashioned at the top to a rude resemblance
of a vulture. Many of these columns, however had been blown down, or
perhaps struck by lightning, and lay broken upon the wall, or if they
had fallen inward, at its foot; but some, six or eight perhaps, were
still standing.

Benita learned afterwards that they must have been placed there by
the ancient Phoenicians, or whatever people constructed this gigantic
fortification, and had something to do with the exact recordings of the
different seasons of the year, and their sub-divisions, by means of the
shadows which they cast. As yet, however, she did not pay much attention
to them, for she was engaged in considering a more remarkable relic of
antiquity which stood upon the very verge of the precipice, the wall,
indeed, being built up to its base on either side.

It was the great cone of which Richard Seymour had told her, fifty feet
high or more, such as once was found in the Phoenician temples. But in
this case it was not built of masonry, but shaped by the hand of man out
of a single gigantic granite monolith of the sort that are sometimes to
be met with in Africa, that thousands or millions of years ago had been
left standing thus when the softer rock around it was worn away by time
and weather. On the inner side of this cone were easy steps whereby
it could be ascended, and its top, which might have been six feet in
diameter, was fashioned in the shape of a cup, probably for the purposes
of acts of worship and of sacrifice. This extraordinary monument, which,
except on the river side, could not be seen from below on account of
the slope of the hill, leaned slightly outwards, so that a stone dropped
from its crest would fall into the waters of the stream.

"Thence it was," said the Molimo, "that my forefathers saw the last of
the Portuguese, the fair daughter of the great Captain Ferreira, hurl
herself to death after she had given the gold into our keeping, and laid
the curse upon it, until she came again. So in my dreams have I seen and
heard her also, ay, and others have seen her, but these only from by the
river far below."

He paused awhile, looking at Benita with his queer, dreamy eyes; then
said suddenly:

"Say, Lady, do you remember nothing of that matter?"